East Jeff levee plan approved

The Army Corps of Engineers' commander in New Orleans has signed paperwork approving his agency's plan to reduce the risk of hurricane-fueled flooding in the East Jefferson lakefront area.

The plan, as outlined earlier in a document called Individual Environmental Report No. 3, identifies the corps' prefered method of providing more flood protection along Lake Pontchartrain in Kenner and Metairie. It includes raising 9-1/2 miles of earthen levee, although corps engineers are still performing geotechnical analyses to determine whether any of the levee's existing footprint must ultimately change to accommodate the extra height. In some cases, berms might be expanded.

IER 3 also discusses replacing floodgates across Williams and Bonnabel boulevards, as well as building more frontal protection and more robust floodwalls to protect Jefferson Parish pump stations from storm surges.

The formulation and publication of IER No. 3 was required by federal law to ensure that corps engineers, in multiple public forums, evaluated and discussed -- before construction -- the effect of various protection projects on the human and natural environment.